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Carol Burke, a partner specializing in finance at Pillsbury Winthrop
Shaw Pittman LLP in Houston, said she's barraged daily with questions
from borrowers, including do they still have to pay the fee if a lender
won't fulfill its commitments (yes) and will market disruption clauses
be enforced (yes). "It's like ground zero," she said. Sandra Reid, assurance senior manager in the energy practice at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, said she's seeing companies asking joint
venture partners to fund projects to keep their development humming. And Janet Clark, CFO of Marathon Oil Corp., said her company had to
throw out its budgets from September because its estimate for oil
prices "was as out of date as the title of this panel," she said.
Still, her company is not putting the brakes on development. "Oil companies need to invest in projects so we don't wake up in
2012 with nothing," she said. "But we need to only invest in projects
that have value creation." Clark thinks resource-rich energy companies that in the past relied
on banks for financing will be swallowed up by bigger, better
capitalized companies, mostly in stock-for-stock deals. "It's just going to get tougher and tougher, and I'm not optimistic
that the banks are going to open their pocketbooks anytime soon," she
said. "If they can sell out at a decent premium, they will do that for
the benefit of their shareholders." After the panel, Clark said Marathon would consider buying assets or whole companies but noted that the company has a lot of organic opportunities to keep it busy. Said she: "In 2009 we'll see some interesting opportunities, as assets become more attractive." - Claire Poole Claire Poole is The Deal's senior energy writer. Categories Deal Video
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About 900 women packed into Houston's Westin Galleria hotel this week for the Women's Global Leadership Conference in Energy and Technology, and one of the more lively panels was Accessing the Capital Markets -- Positioning Energy for Outside Capital. Needless to say, the panelists didn't have a lot to say on the topic, seeing there's little capital to be had for anyone, even energy companies. But they had plenty to say about how difficult it will be for cash-poor energy companies to execute on their projects. 
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